#personal spewage

[semiotomatics]

for real tho, the thing that i feel like ppl arent realizing/talking abt, at least the thing for me, is that it was never about the website. like, do i like tumblr? sure, it mostly does what i want in a familiar, vaguely-easy-to-use way. but thats only bc ive been here 13 years and have the internet version of toxoplasmosis keeping me docile and trusting of capitalist corporations. tumblr could Site Of Theseus itself into a completely different beast and id still be coming back day after day.

its not the site that keeps me coming back, its the people. and i dont just mean my friends, or my Beloved Mutuals™, or my favourite blogs i follow. i mean the whole community. every person who posts in a tag i follow, or makes a poll i vote in, or shares their beautiful artwork. every random user who makes a post that ends up going viral. everyone who makes and reblogs Destiel News Alerts. everyone who logs on and agrees to Commit To The Bit until the bitter end. thats why i love this hellsite so much.

thats also why, when ppl ask "where are you going next?", i really dont have an answer for them. i want to say "wherever my friends go", but theres no telling where thatll be. i might be able to find some, or most of, or maybe even all of my mutuals/friends on some other site, but theres no guarantee that im going to find this community. that's what im going to miss when this site dies. not the UI, or the branding, or the crabs. not tumblr.com. im going to miss us.

[stuckinthewrongworld]

This will be the only time I post an actual picture of myself, but I recently started cutting my hair short and today I got it cut the shortest I've ever had it. I'm totally feeling myself and feel so badass right now, so I had to share! I'll probably delete this later.

[lil0ak]

Does it count as frotting if he rubs it against my microscopic T dick

[bandedbulbussnarfblat]

sometimes, i really wish i didn't live in the bible belt.

i've been atheist my whole life. or at least, once i got old enough to question things instead of just blindly accept what my parents told me. though i was never good at that either, i was one of those kids that had to know things. i never bought into the tooth fairy or easter bunny, and i thought santa was just a game we all played and pretended to believe it. the idea of god felt the same to me, like some thing we were just pretending to believe in

except the grownups (and even some of the kids) actually believed it. so i went along with it, because my mom made me go to church with her, so it wasn't like i had a choice. but it never felt true to me, though i tried to make it feel real

i was 11 when i realized i never would and never could. i had tried to force myself to believe, but it never worked. i knew, deep inside, that there was no higher power. more so, i knew i couldn't keep spending my life living a lie. i knew i'd never be the believer i pretended to be.

and that scared me. not because the idea of hell or anything, but because i'd sat through more than one sermon and heard about how non-believers would burn in hell with the sinners. and my church 'family' seemed to agree. so that let me know that these people who called themselves my friends would be fine with seeing me burn in hell for all eternity, just because i didn't believe in the same invisible man in the sky as them

i didn't even believe in hell, but just imagine that. knowing that the people you've known your whole life believe you deserve to be punished forever for not believing what they believe. i'd already spent my entire life feeling like an outsider (multiple undiagnosed mental illnesses/disorders) so when i realized i could never be what these people wanted me to be, that i would never be able to convince myself to believe, it terrified me.

so much so that i got 'saved' in front of the congregation the next sunday. i pretended to believe as hard as i could. hell, i even wrote fake entries into my diary just in case anyone found it and read it

i was so afraid to admit i didn't believe. but so angry that i had to pretend. so i questioned things and made people uncomfortable. eventually, i had enough and said i was atheist. i was more angry than scared by then, fueled by teenage angst and hormones and the undiagnosed depression/anxiety disorders

in the end, I stopped going to church when my mother stopped forcing me. but the damage had already been done. i'd spent years trying to shove myself into a box i didn't fit it, for people that frankly didn't deserve that kind of sacrifice on my part

and there are still people who hear that i don't believe and judge me. who try to convert me. who think of me as less than them bc i don't believe what they believe.

i don't know why i'm thinking of this today. maybe bc my country is hurtling into evangelical christian fascism and that scares me. but i think growing up like that gave me some low-key religious trauma

and now I'll have to go back to work soon. where i'll have coworkers who ask me about where i go to church, who try to invite me to there's. to students who sometimes ask me questions about religion, and I have to say i'm "not religious" bc if i say i'm an atheist there's a good chance parents will complain about me teaching their child

i've literally heard a coworker being gossiped about and mistrusted bc he's openly atheist. people blatantly admitting they don't want to work with him. so i stay in my lane and stick to myself and try not to engage with these people beyond a professional level

i have to sit in anger, when we're forced to do something like pray in school, something that isn't supposed to be legal. hell, our superintendent makes us all pray with him when we have our yearly meetings

add to that i'm pretty far left when it comes to politics, i'm queer, and neurodivergant i don't feel like there's a place for me here. i live in a very conservative area. i'm talking majority trump fans conservative. but i'm trapped, too poor to escape. and it eats at me sometimes, being around all these people who if they knew me, would condemn me. even if i believe in letting people believe or disbelieve whatever they want and minding my own damn business about it

sometimes, i really wish i didn't live in the bible belt

[coffee-at-annies]

I'm sad...

[baby-blue-octopus]

Personal spewage!

[wildmasks]

Had a rough day. I know it'll pass but in the meantime here's a picture of a dog I took care of this week named Rover. He's a good boy.

[anonforlackofabettername]

When my depression gets really bad I don't get suicidal. I don't want to die. I've never wanted to die. Killing myself is extreme and not something I've ever contemplated even in it's most abstract form. But I do kind of want to cease to exist. Death is messy. Slipping into the void until nothing exists but your component atoms sounds so much pleasanter and less stressful than living in this shit hole of a universe. At least that's what my depression tells me. And then I have to tell my depression, my brain, and myself that they're all pieces of shit and I need to pull myself together and fucking function goddamn it.